Ctesias&146 Persica<i/> in Its Near Eastern Context [Hardcover]

ThePersicais an extensive history of Assyria and Persia written by the Greek historian Ctesias, who served as a doctor to the Persian king Artaxerxes II around 400 bce. Written for a Greek readership, thePersicainfluenced the development of both historiographic and literary traditions in Greece. It also, contends Matt Waters, is an essential but often misunderstood source for the history of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
            Waters, as a historian of Persia with command of Akkadian, Elamite, and Old Persian languages in addition to Latin and Greek, offers a fresh interdisciplinary analysis of thePersica.He shows in detail how Ctesias’ history, though written in a Greek literary style, was infused with two millennia of Mesopotamian and Persian motifs, legends, and traditions. This Hellenized version of Persian culture was enormously influential in antiquity, shaping Greek stereotypes of effeminate Persian monarchs, licentious and vengeful queens, and conniving eunuchs. Waters’ revealing study contributes significantly to knowledge of ancient historiography, Persian dynastic traditions and culture, and the influence of Near Eastern texts and oral tradition on Greek literature.

A modern historian sheds new light on an ancient Greek history of Persia.

“A pleasure to read. Waters opens new paths in Ctesian studies, showing that thePersicais not merely the product of a Greek playing literary games, but may actually have its origins in genuine documents from the ancient Near East.”—Jan Pieter Stronk, editor and translator ofCtesias’ Persian History,Part 1

“This welcome study examines how the Greek author Ctesias processed an ancient Near Eastern and Iranian body of thought into a Greek world of ideas.”—Josef Wiesehöfer, Kiel University

List of Illustrations  &lƒ°